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versão impressa ISSN 0104-4060versão On-line ISSN 1984-0411

Educ. Rev. vol.37  Curitiba  2021  Epub 08-Abr-2021

https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-4060.75205 

DOSSIER - The biographical dimension as formation process, self comprehension and world understanding

Threads of memories … On possibilities of writing one's self and inventing worlds...1

Carlos Eduardo Ferraço* 
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4019-591X

* Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação. Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brasil. E-mail: ferraco@uol.com.br


ABSTRACT

This article aims to problematize different events experienced in the immanence of a life. It is based on some threads of memories assumed as possible written productions of one's self and the invention of worlds, seeking to escape the representations and explanations that are implied as attestations of truth of what has been lived, allied to the hypertrophy of the Self, which are marks of the chapter of Modernity that celebrates the emergence of a self-centered subject who is endowed with mindfulness. To this end, it seeks to intertwine different temporalities that were constituted as processes of self-education, in the midst of epistemologies and life experiments, assumed as folds that allowed us to highlight issues related to ruptures and discontinuities, in order to help us advocate that a life is always in excess in relation to any writing produced about this life. If, at the end of the reading, a thread of Ariadne appears as a plot pre-established by us, it is certainly an effect that reverberated with the act of writing itself and not as an effect of a prior intention-cause. If I am asked: Was there this memorial or did you make it up? I would say: If there wasn't, now, because I wrote, it came into being. It never happened as a priori truth so that it can rise as an invention, as many times as necessary.

Keywords: Memory; Invention; Writings about one's self; Self-education; Experience

RESUMO

Trata-se de artigo que tem como objetivo problematizar diferentes acontecimentos vividos na imanência de uma vida, a partir de alguns fios de memórias assumidos como possibilidades de escritas de produção de si e de invenção de mundos. Nesse sentido, busca escapar, das representações e das explicações que se insinuam como atestados de verdade do vivido, aliados à hipertrofia do Eu, marcas do capítulo da Modernidade que celebra o surgimento de um sujeito autocentrado e dotado de uma consciência plena. Para tanto, busca enredar diferentes temporalidades que se constituíram como processos de autoformação, em meio a epistemologias e experimentações de vida, assumidas como dobras que nos permitiram evidenciar questões afetas às rupturas e às descontinuidades, de modo a nos ajudar a defender que uma vida está sempre em excesso em relação a qualquer escrita que se faça sobre ela. Se, ao final da leitura, surgir um fio de Ariadne que se mostre como um enredo preestabelecido por nós trata-se, certamente, de um efeito que reverberou com o próprio ato da escrita e não como efeito de uma intenção-causa primeira. Se me perguntarem: Houve esse memorial ou você inventou? Eu diria: Se não houve, agora, porque escrevi, passou a existir. Ele nunca aconteceu como verdade a priori para que possa insurgir como invenção, quantas vezes forem necessárias.

Palavras-chave: Memória; Invenção; Escritas de si; Autoformação; Experiência

Memory

Loving the lost leaves this heart confused.

Nothing can forget you against the senseless plea of no.

Tangible things become insensitive to the palm of the hand.

But ended things much more than beautiful, these will remain.

(ANDRADE, 1959, p. 21).

What forces us to write?

Inspired by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, we argue3 that the writing of this article does not intend to constitute itself either as a true statement of the lived nor as a hypertrophy of the Self (LYOTARD, 1996). We are not interested in representing or explaining what happened, often present in autobiographical writings because, for Foucault (2008), this type of writing has a normalizing character that seeks to give coherence to what happens in our absence, no matter how much we want to be in control of our lives.

In fact, we are not aiming for a paper that follows the traces of a development linearly, although we used some temporal events as cutouts, such as folds (DELEUZE, 2009) that allowed us to problematize important issues for us. As Foucault warns:

Continuous history is the indispensable correlative of the founding function of the subject: the guarantee that everything that has eluded him may be restored to him; the certainty that time will disperse nothing without restoring it in a reconstituted unity; the promise that one day the subject - in the form of historical consciousness - will once again be able to appropriate, to bring back under his sway, all those things that are kept at a distance by difference, and find in them what might be called his abode (FOUCAULT, 2008, p . 14).

Although I agree with Foucault on the impossibility of guaranteeing coherence at random in life, we are also not interested, with this writing, in answering the question “How do we become what we are?”, especially because we are, daily, managed by discontinuous and different subjectivation processes that constitute, at each moment, something different from what we were before, which makes the question posed by the author unanswerable.

Communing with the Modernity chapter that celebrates the emergence of the self-centered subject and endowed with mindfulness, (auto)biographical writing, in general, shares a discursive genre that seeks to try to give coherence to the experience that is, in itself,made of discontinuities and ruptures, diffuse, fragmented, rhizomatic, multiple and cataclysmic, not constituting as a predictable course of our life, but as insurgencies, inaugural mutations. One life (DELEUZE, 2002) is always in excess in relation to any writing that is done on it.

Thus, the making of this article tried to escape, whenever possible, the idea that we are driven by intentions and plots pre-established by us or for us and that would cross our life, that is, the existence of a thread of Ariadne that would help us to not get lost in the labyrinths of events, a kind of conducting line that would guide us and allow us to look retrospectively in order to give a sense of coherence to the experience.

No at all! This is not a guideline, but multiple networks woven by many threads, which are forming us in difference, based on chance, events, encounters and experiences lived as force-powers of surprising dispositions-indispositions with the eternal novelty of world, as a schizophrenic attempt to make sense of chaos. It is, then, about possibilities of writing of self-production and invention of worlds.

Writings of the self and invention of worlds as bricolages of experiences and production of possibilities and not as unveiling of hidden meanings in the past. Writings-inventions that do not aim at an analysis of the truth, but that rise in the midst of woven networks, as truth effects that, at the moment, we are interested in producing.

Anyway, writings of one's self and inventing worlds not as a faithful description of the facts, but as fiction, art of narrating (CERTEAU, 1994), as in the poem “Explanation” by Cecília Meirelles (1958):

In old winds I gave the tears that I had.

The star goes up, the star goes down ...

- I wait for my own coming.

I browse the memory without margins.

Someone tell my story

and someone kills the characters

(MEIRELES, 1958, p.11)

If, at the end of the reading of this text, a guideline appears, it is certainly an effect that reverberated with the act of writing itself and not a first intention-cause. It is an invention (CERTEAU, 1994) of the anonymous, ephemeral, chaotic, insurgent and sneaky arts of writing-making-thinking-speaking of the practitioners of everyday life that we are and that burst with liveliness and do not allow themselves to be capitalized. To paraphrase Adélia Prado (2003), if you ask me: Was there a memorial or did you invent it? I would say: If there wasn't, now, because I wrote, it came to exist. It never happened as a priori truth so that it can rise as an invention, as many times as necessary.

The Scientific Course and the Physics Degree

I walk slowly because I was once in a hurry

And I take this smile

Because I cried too much

Today I feel stronger, happier, who knows

I can only be sure that I know very little, or know nothing [...]

I think that fulfilling life is simply

Understanding the march and moving forward

Each of us makes up his story

Each being in itself carries the gift of being able and being happy

(SATER; TEIXEIRA, 1990).

The entrance to the Physics Degree Course at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), in 1977, brought us, at first, the possibility of finally fulfilling the desire to become a professor-scientist different from the cliché representations which, until then, we had access to in the Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics classes of the old Scientific Course. In general, the images presented to us with the official curricula of these disciplines, but not only in these, reinforced stereotyped views of science and scientist, placing them outside the majority of the mortal world.

Thus, these cliché representations produced discourses that attributed to scientists behaviors considered as standards necessary for good scientific practice, such as impersonality, neutrality and objectivity. Dressed in their white coats and with glasses on the tip of their noses and selfless from desires, men of science behaved, as Thuillier (1994, p. 17) observed, “[...] as if they did not have a unique psychological profile, as if they had no affectivity, passions, culture, personal convictions inherited from their environment and education. As if they had no history, not even unconsciousness”.

In turn, science constituted itself as something transcendental, unattainable and superior to everyday life. A harmonic, linear and gradual path, only possible for special men to follow with their special experiments and theories. In this sense, the views of science and scientist conveyed in our “scientific” education, in general, oscillated between the supernatural and experimentation, the divine and the cognitive, fantasy and reason.

When discussing traditional views of science, Thuillier (1994) refers to these two approaches, calling them mystical and empirical. In the first case, science would translate into sacred knowledge, protected by strict taboos, in which a long tradition would invite the profane to venerate it as an action of immaculate superior quality (the Immaculate Conception). Here, the scientist would be a missionary or seer, possessing almost miraculous tricks.

In the second case, science would assert itself through the experimental method, which, in itself, would guarantee the legitimacy of the results obtained. The scientist would no longer be a priest, but an attentive observer. A humble bee that would laboriously seek its immense provision in the field of experimentation. In both cases, impartiality, contemplation, perfection, dedication and devotion would be necessary requirements for the award of scientist.

At the same time that we had access to the discursive production of a given cliché model of science and scientist in the classes of the Scientific Course, the attitudes of our physics professor put the model itself under suspicion. For example, the criticism he made of his education in terms of the rigor of the classes and the tricks that he had to pull to pass the year, distanced themselves from the ideal that the teacher himself defended in the classes, showing a situation in which everyday life produced, randomly, breaks in the model itself.

With this, although we do not correspond to the profile of a standard scientist and, also, we do not achieve a performance better than from average to good in Physics, Chemistry and Biology classes, we imagined ourselves incorporating a certain scientific spirit, when entering our improvised laboratory in the backyard of our house. There, most of the time alone and, sometimes, accompanied by the curious looks of our brothers and sisters, we mixed products, experimented with colors, flavors, aromas of different products, and observed tiny beings with improvised magnifiers, as we were unable to have a microscope, object of desire that, when we won, enabled us to update the memories of days spent in that improvised space of life experiments.

Unlike most of the past experiences as activities at home or in the textbooks, the experiments we had in our backyard laboratory produced sensations that led us to stay there for hours, managed by the expectation of being able to discover something, to surprise us with the unexpected, like when we made gunpowder for the first time. Memories of childhood inventions.

Upon entering the graduate course in Physics, we realized that the experiences lived by us in that improvised laboratory were nothing more than fun, games or, as a professor of Experimental Physics I, of common sense, said, in which empirical knowledge would prevail, when the important thing would be systematized knowledge.

The “correct” model of scientific production was not one in which imagination, creation and freedom of action allowed us to do what we wanted, without worrying whether we were working with Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Art or Cooking. Once again, the concepts of science and scientist evoked a formal meaning, closed with divisions within which research was carried out, with hierarchies and necessary prerequisites to be fulfilled, if we were to achieve academic status.

One of the most striking hierarchies experienced in our training was the fact that experimental subjects were only taken after the second year, when, then, the theoretical prerequisites would already be "assimilated", as a Physics teacher IV said: "Without theory you don't go very far in the experimental ones”. This was not true, since for each Experimental Physics, there were six in total, there was a pre-established script to be followed and it was planned according to a logic from simple to complex, from particular to general and that had nothing to do with the theoretical subjects already taken. That is, the experimental disciplines were also constituted as theoretical.

The dichotomies imposed in undergraduate Physics between theory vs. practice, common sense vs. science, science vs. imagination, nature vs. society, empirical knowledge vs. systematic knowledge4, among others, were problematized during the Master's Course in Education at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), with the reading of different papers, such as: “The common sense of science”, by Jacob Bronoswki (1997), and “How does man know the world around him?”, by Korshunova and Kirilenko (1986). For example, for Bronowski (1997), the ideas of order, cause and chance, despite being present in scientific discourse, have their origin in common sense. According to the author:

None of these ideas are peculiar to science, let alone order. They all have applications in science; but they are all older than these applications. All are broader and deeper than the techniques in which science expresses them. They are common sense ideas. By this I mean that they are generalizations that we all make on a day-to-day basis and that we use continuously to help us govern life. Unfortunately, common sense has no documented history. We often assume that it does not even evolve and that what we now call common sense has always been the sense of everyone, which is not true. Science records all of this more adequately. Science has a history in which the development of these ideas can clearly be discerned (BRONOWSKI, 1997, p. 19).

In turn, when discussing the ideas of creativity, flash, imagination, discovery, intuition, chance and error, Korshunova and Kirilenko (1986) claim that these concepts are all inherent to the process of producing science. For them, the act of creation is not reduced to cognitive, rational processes, trials and errors. It is also necessary to take into account non-conscious elements, such as intuition, imagination and chance. It is not a matter of falling into a vision of creation as an arbitrary activity free of human action, nullifying the role of consciousness, but of overcoming the idea of creation as something eminently rational, which would be realized and deduced mainly by reason.

One of the themes highlighted by the authors in the creative process is imagination. For them, the power to imagine is innate to the human, without which work and creation would not be possible, since imagination allows us to relate sensory and rational elements of knowledge. The heuristic sense of imagination would also be shown in the possibility of establishing connections between different temporalities, between present, past and future events, in order to create possibilities for the imagination, in its connection with time, to enhance, in the experience of these temporalities, illusory elements, invented in the midst of connections that do not necessarily have an analogy with reality5

Make no mistake, I make no mistake

Everything right now can be for a second

King time, Oh king time, Oh King time

Transform the old ways of living

Teach me, Oh father, what I do not yet know

Mother Lady of Perpetual, save me

(GIL, 1984).

Although the modern hegemonic discourse (NAJMANOVICH, 2001) intended to exterminate the imagination, intuition, errors, dreams, absurdities and frauds of scientific production, there are countless examples of the strength of these dimensions of human thought in this production. It is another story of science told by authors who are based on references other than those consecrated by modern rationality itself. It is about thinking of scientific production from, who knows, a didactics of invention:

Unlearning 8 hours a day teaches the basics.

Repeat, repeat - until you are different.

Repeat is a gift of style.

Things no longer want to be seen by reasonable people:

They want to be looked at in blue -

Like a child you look like a bird.

I remember a boy repeating the afternoons in that backyard

(BARROS, 1993).

In this direction, in the Master's and Doctorate courses in Education, we realized that modern rationality occupies a privileged place in society, standing as a result of man's struggle against the concepts supported by religious dogmas. The modern discourse became a reference in opposition to the religious one, dominant until then. With the lights (FOUCAULT, 2015), the power of religious discourse begins to decline without, however, disappearing. Disregarding the magical-divine hypothesis and strengthened by rigorous and absolute determinism, modern hegemonic discourse aimed to explain everything.

Thus, modernity would not only be in a position to found a common ethic, but also to enable men to live better, both in terms of comfort derived from its benefits, and in the definition of the truth about everything around us. In its defense of a cognitive-instrumental logic, modern hegemonic discourse validated the technique aimed at domination and the manipulation of nature, not to mention that this domination would result in the domination and extermination of life itself (SANTOS, 2000).

If, in the hegemonic discourse of modernity, reason also produced mechanisms of oppression of the human race, the discourses of postmodern science have warned us to seek to guarantee the perpetuation of the species in a proposal to enchant the world. Possible enchantment as far as, in fact, we believe that ideas also lead the world, enchant as a poetic listening of nature, a process of production and invention.

Aware that the sciences are also made with dreams and ideals, a whole group of researchers from different areas has conspired in favor of prudent knowledge for a decent life (SANTOS, 2000). A science that can see itself as capable of providing better living conditions to human beings, committed to the production of possible worlds of beautiful lives.

Returning to the written-invented memories of our education, we think that, despite all the amateurism and naivete of our daily experiences in that laboratory in the backyard of our house, there was a feeling that moved us and was nourished by creativity, playfulness and pleasure by condition of entangling action, imagination and emotion. In this sense, it is interesting to think that, in the Doctoral Course, we had the opportunity to read, on the recommendation of our supervisor, Alberto Vilanni, the book “Laboratory life: the production of scientific facts”, by Bruno Latour and Steve Wolgar, published in 1997.

In said work, Latour (1997) is situated in a part of the history of science that opposes the so-called macrosociological currents, when proposing a research approach that considers the daily life experienced by researchers in scientific production. The most curious thing is that, although Latour (1997) makes reference to the forms of coexistence in the different space-times of a laboratory (space for snacks, cuisine, coffee etc.), in his analyzes he did not take into account, for example, informal conversations, small gestures and events that take place in these other space-times, prioritizing only the formal space of the laboratory.

The observation we made in relation to Latour's (1997) view of everyday life was only possible because, at the same time, we were reading, at the suggestion of Nilda Alves, the book “The invention of everyday life: arts of making”, by Michel de Certeau (1994), for whom daily life has an immanent political-inventive dimension, not being reduced to a physical place. In other words, there is an inventive epistemology of everyday life that, in our view, Latour (1997) did not see.

In the middle of the way was a stone was a stone in the middle of the way was a stone

in the middle of the way was a stone.

(ANDRADE, 2002, p.?)

The teaching experience and entry to the master's in education

In the same year that we started to graduate in Physics, we started to work as a teaching tutor6 for Mathematics in Elementary School at Itagiba Escobar State School in the city of Cariacica, in the State of Espírito Santo. With a weekly workload of 30 hours and taking, on average, five subjects per semester, we took turns between the classrooms of the university and the public school, in addition to working on subject monitoring, and also participating in events, such as the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (UFBA, 1981) and the 5th National Symposium on Physics Education (UFMG, 1982), in addition to helping the Galileo Galilei Academic Physics Center, having been a speaker for the 1982 graduates.

Still in 1982, after completing the licentiate degree, we continued as a contracted teacher of the State and were hired by decree, since there was no competition, in the Municipal Education Network of Vitória, working in different schools until our entrance to the Master's in Education at UFF, in 1985. It was a period of intense teaching activity, sometimes working in three shifts in different socioeconomic contexts, which helped us to expand and further enhance our work-affection relationship with the public school. A relationship based on an ethical-aesthetic-political commitment to everyone who helped us on our journey. A feeling of eternal gratitude, of a longing that has no end, of an unpayable debt to public education, which so many memories and joys have given us.

Memories of the teachers and the closest teachers, the dearest students and also the most hated. Memories of the smell of lunch, of vaccine day, the time-outs, the fights, the noise of the rooms, the sweat of the Physical Education classes, the anthem sung on Thursdays, the shouting and pushing in the lines, the meetings with the parents, the class council. Memories of the gang rehearsals, the spring queen contests, the surprise parties on birthdays and the celebrations on Master and Student Days. Memories of the smell of alcohol from the tests copied on the mimeograph, from the fans at the games and class scavenger hunts, from the adventures on the walks, from the first kiss, from the first love. Recent memories7on the occasion of our research, such as the homage paid by the 8th grade class, in a touching and simple graduation when, from the small schoolyard, the students, emotionally, sang through the teachers' room window:

It's time to go, I come here to say goodbye and say

That wherever I walk, I will remember you

I can only say goodbye now, and my path goes on

I'll leave my heart here, don't be sad if I cry

But now, goodbye ...

(CARLOS, 1974)

Scenes that weave different daily time-spaces, that do not leave our memories and are updated every time we talk about them. Memories that mark our life as a teacher and that are confused with the stories that are narrated by the subjects with whom we research.

Memories that are saddened by the dismissal of colleagues when the year ends and the joy of meeting a new friend every year. Memories that live in the homesickness that we have of our school days that never go away. Times that are always updated and do not let us forget that our history is confused with that of the public school.

For so much love, for so much emotion

Life made me this way

Sweet or atrocious, meek or fierce

Me, hunter of me

Stuck in songs

Surrendered to passions that never ended

I will find myself far from my place

Me, hunter of me

(MAGRÃO; SÁ, 1981)

Moved, then, by the experiences of affection and political commitment and, also, by the feeling of hope for a better world, we entered the Master's Course in Education at UFF in the Area of Teaching Methods and Techniques, in March 1985, from a leave with pay8. At the time, we already had eight years of experience as a teacher of mathematics and physics in public schools, having participated, only once, in a recycling of teachers course, an expression used at the time to refer to the continuing education of educators9.

We also had not received any didactic and / or political-pedagogical guidance from the teams of the Education Departments for which we worked, except for a list of curriculum contents in Mathematics organized from 5th to 8th grades, used by the Municipal Education Secretariat of Vitória (SEME / PMV).

Thus, the theoretical references we had in the educational area, until the entrance to the master's degree, were reduced to the readings of the subjects taken at the UFES Pedagogical Center that, in general, turned to either Piaget's learning psychology or to themes related to technicality.

At the time of the master's degree, the theme that prevailed in education referred to the process of building knowledge, thought not only from the cognitive approach (Piaget) but, above all, from social practice (Vygotsky), a trend that seemed more exciting to us, even more so because of the experiences lived by us both in the scientific and in the licentiate course.

In addition, our involvement with the indicated readings, especially in the subjects taken with Nilda Alves, Regina Leite Garcia, Gaudêncio Frigotto and Victor Vicent Valla, brought us closer to the theory of dialectical materialism10 with an emphasis on the question of knowledge. This approach led us to propose a project whose central objective was to discuss the relationship between theory and practice, in order to bring us even closer to the discussion that has been around us for some time: the dichotomy empirical knowledge vs. systematic knowledge.

Another determining factor in the constitution of our problematic field of research, resulting in a chapter in the dissertation, arose from our work as a researcher, already in the first year of the master's course, in the research project “The day-to-day of the textbook: the articulation of the content and of the method in textbooks”, coordinated by Nilda Alves, and whose main objective was to analyze the ten most purchased collections under the National Plan for Textbooks (PNLD), with dialectical materialism as the theoretical-methodological framework, resulting in our first publication in a journal (FERRAÇO, 1987)11.

After the PNLD project was concluded, we were invited to participate, as a research assistant in the area of Physics, in the project "Teacher training for the first grades: proposal for action and thinking"12 also coordinated by Nilda Alves, whose central objective was to carry out, in schools in different municipalities in Rio de Janeiro, moments of continuing education. Thinking, today, about how we were going to the schools involved in this research, we realized that we were already practicing, even without naming as such, research in / of / with the school daily life and, more than that, with the use of conversations as a methodological procedure for “collecting” data. On different occasions, we held conversations in schools, in order to enable them to speak, without hierarchies or the need for authorization, on issues related to the needs and problems faced13.

If we can infer that the first research experience in the master's degree helped us, more directly, in the definition of our dissertation theme, it is also possible to say that our second experience as a researcher stimulated us to propose a methodology that went to the creation of alternatives for the problems faced in classrooms by school practitioners, that is, problematized issues that emerged in the daily lives of the schools surveyed, which, in a way, can be seen in the text of the dissertation:

As we have seen, our entry into the school's daily life was something that has been happening gradually, over the years, and will continue to happen after we leave. In other words, our direct action in the daily life of the school, in the classroom, happened as our presence in these spaces was necessary, in order to monitor, advise, evaluate and plan the activities developed by teachers, specialists and students. At no time did we enter the school without the support of the professionals who worked there (FERRAÇO 1990, p. 128).

Living in Rio, in addition to the master's activities, also allowed us to make some dreams come true, such as playing volleyball again and parading in a samba school14. A time of good meetings, of a beautiful life and full of future plans. Everything was yet to come, we thought... A time to go to the beach on a Monday, to take a model and mannequin course, to go to Niterói by boat, to drink dark beer at Amarelinho. A time of "carioquese" and the always lively meetings at Nilda's house.

Every farewell is pain.

So sweet, however,

That I would say to you good night.

Until the day dawned

(SHAKESPEARE, 1998).

The return to the Municipal Education Secretariat of Vitória (SEME / PMV)

With the defense of the Master's Degree, we returned, in March 1989[28], to the Municipal Education Secretariat of Vitória, when we were then invited to compose the team of the Department of Education, being responsible for advising the schools from the demands that arrived and also contributing with the work of coordinating the mathematics area. On November 1990, we assumed the leadership of the Pedagogical-Educational Guidance Division, remaining in office until January 1993, when we held the Directorate of the Teaching Department, until our entry as professor at UFES, in March 1994.

The Master's Course enabled us to develop several actions at SEME/PMV with regards to training and curriculum, forcing us to think about movements of composition in these fields having as main theoretical-epistemological reference the constructivist view of knowledge. However, as we attended schools in order to interact with the events and experiences that emerged in their daily lives, we began to consider the need for a different theorization that assumed the dimensions of difference, multiplicity and chance of the practices carried out by the subjects who were there under the tutelage of constructivism.

It was not a question of denying, but of problematizing the constructivist view of knowledge, of complexifying it, of expanding its possibilities beyond the limits established by curricular prescriptive texts, including those we help to write. It was about trying to bring to the curriculum prescription clues of what was being experienced in the daily lives of schools by practicing subjects, sort of characterizing the texts of the proposals not only as prescriptions, but also, as ephemeral descriptions of the lived. In summary, it was about the movement, later named by Alves (2001) to turn upside down, in which theory is seen as the limit of practice and not as a way of explaining and / or prescribing it.

In other words, even if we were not aware of the theoretical-methodological point of view, our problematizations indicated the need for a sustained epistemology, as already said, due to the dimensions of multiplicity, difference and chance for the relations established in the production of knowledge, in order to defend that it is not a “construction”, neither architectural nor even social, but a weave of multiple threads, networks of know-how, ideas already present in the research groups of the master's and that was expanded with Topics of Epistemology, taught by Nilson José Machado in our first semester of the Doctoral Course.

Entry as a professor at UFES and a PhD in Education at the University of São Paulo (USP)

Our entrance to the Department of Supervision and School Administration of the Pedagogical Center (Dase / CP) took place on March 8, 1994, after a long and exhaustive selection process for a single vacancy, for a total of 14 candidates. As the competition was in the area of ​​school administration, the bibliography included many authors whose publications we were unaware of, a fact that led us to be isolated for a long time doing readings. When appointed, we taught subjects in different licentiate courses and in specialization courses, while dedicating ourselves to continue our studies in the fields of curriculum, initial and continuing education and teaching-learning. These themes made up the problematic fields of research that we coordinated at the time: “Curriculum knowledge of mathematics: the scientific, ludic, pragmatic, economic, cultural and political axes” and, “The teaching of mathematics in pre-school and primary school: analysis of the performance of teachers and students”.

After the probationary period ended, we applied for the selection process of the Doctoral Course in Education at USP, having been approved in the Didactics concentration area, under the guidance of Professor Alberto Villani, starting in March 1996. In the first three months, due to the fact that we still had activities at UFES, we traveled weekly to São Paulo to attend the disciplines. After three exhausting months of commuting with 14 hours of travel, we decided to live in São Paulo, when, then, we were able to experience a feeling of anonymity and, at the same time, fascination with a city that "happens" in all corners and moments. A metropolis that makes the apparent differ and makes what is expected become chance.

When I faced you face to face I didn't see my face

I called what I saw bad taste, bad taste

It's that Narcissus thinks ugly what is not a mirror

And the mind terrifies what is not even old

Nothing that wasn't before when we're not mutants

And it was a difficult start

I push away what I don't know

And who comes from another happy city dream

Quickly learn to call yourself reality

Because you are the inside out of inside out of inside out

(VELOSO, 1978).

Living in São Paulo we were allowed to participate intensively in the daily activities of the doctoral activities, as well as to explore the city itself in terms of everything it had to offer us. Then, dealt with by the feelings of strangeness, anonymity and enchantment in the city, we allowed ourselves to experience the different networks made possible by the Doctoral Course and also many others that, daily, made us feel the power of the dimensions of incompleteness, chaos and chance that produce us.

We think that the experiences-encounters we had with the different spaces-times of the great metropolis were fundamental not only for the composition of the meanings we produced with the readings we took in the course, but, above all, they were decisive in the constitution of the problematic field that made us rise with our doctoral thesis. In fact, it is as if the experiences in everyday networks of scriptures in the city, which intertwined, composing multiple stories, without authorship or spectators, as Certeau (1994) said, forced us to think about the research theme in order to explode the objectifications, identifications and representations of school, making the object-subject “curriculum” spread, diluted and expanded through the city's writing networks, entangled with the multiplicities and differences that make up the space-times practiced by the subjects.

In other words, the condition of assuming ourselves as a subject and, at the same time, an object of the knowledge we produced, allowed us, once again, to problematize the theory vs. practice and man vs. nature dichotomies, forcing us to look for other possibilities to think up the curriculum. It was not a matter of affirming a phenomenological sense, but of betting on a dimension that considered it in the midst of the ephemeral, multiplicities and insurgencies that are instituted daily and with which we are, in some way, involved.

If we think of the multiplicity of contexts in which we live, such as those experienced-practiced in São Paulo, in the relationships established in these contexts between knowledge, actions, affections and the production of desires, we will assume, in fact, that the curriculum is not reduced to a prescriptive document, but it has to do with the production of a field of ephemeral experiments and that, therefore, are impossible to anticipate and are not allowed to be capitalized. Networked curricula, which are only possible to be thought of in their fabric, in their insurgencies, in their effects and their expansions, since they are elusive, unpredictable, heterarchical, multiple, ephemeral, metamorphosed, permanent becoming that cannot be anticipated, nor planned, much less idealized or prescribed.

We were interested in proposing research that could affirm our ethical-aesthetic-political commitment to the public school, as we did in the master's course. Research that was a form of praise and a political bet on the strength of educators and students who, every day, invent the public school. A thesis that expresses our gratitude for everything that the public school has made possible for us, and also that assumes its daily life as a space-time for the production and fabrication of curriculum and education micropolitics, constituting itself as resistance to government policies that are imposed on these daily lives and which, repeatedly, disqualify their practitioners. With that, “Naked School: or about the strength and beauty of everyday actions” (FERRAÇO 2000) seemed to us, at the moment, a title that could account for our proposal to invent other speeches about the public school and, in effect, could invent other worlds.

Worlds more solidary, more fraternal and plural, committed to the production of beautiful lives. Lives in which the exercise of difference is not in the submission and cancellation of the Other, but in the strength of good encounters that make knowledge the most potent of affections, because, after all, no one knows for sure the answer to the question: What can a body do? put by Espinosa (DELEUZE, 2002).

A year before the doctoral course term ended, we decided to return to Vitória so that we could structure our lives and, little by little, get used to the farewell to São Paulo, which we never fully achieved. Farewell to the research group meetings, the hours we spent on the bus on the way to USP and the readings done to pass the time. Farewell to walks in Ibirapuera, art exhibitions, craft fairs, street performances, theater plays and dance shows.

Farewell to the time that, suddenly, it was night at noon announcing a storm. Farewell to the overcrowded subways, the São Silvestre race, the Paulista bookstores, the street vendors and the sunshine on the balcony of the apartment at Largo do Arouche that reminded us of Vitória. Farewell to the volleyball classes played on Tuesdays and Thursdays at SESC, whose memories are always updated in our conversations in an attempt to (re)live what moved us to be there, completely overwhelmed by the simple pleasure of playing. Farewell to the gay night in São Paulo, where I met Marco, to whom I have been married for 25 years.

It was a boy, strange and charming boy

I heard that he had been traveling, traveling, all the land and the sea

Boy alone and shy, but too wise.

Behold, once, on a magical day, I met him

And when we talked I told him about kings, about the laws, and the pain

And he taught ...

Nothing is greater than giving love and getting love back.

(AHBEZ, 1979).

Farewells are always difficult, but they are necessary for us to live the feeling that the universe, with its chance, always reserves something different and that tells us that it is always worth moving forward. Moving forward in a different way, neither better nor worse than before. Move forward so that life is worthwhile!

I'm attached for what is worth it

and detached from what doesn't mean.

I think we should do something forbidden

- otherwise we will suffocate.

But without feeling guilty

but as a warning that we are free.

I have to be patient so I don't get lost inside myself:

I keep losing sight of me.

I need patience because I am several ways,

including the fatal dead-end

(LISPECTOR, 2004).

1Translated by Henrique Peres. E-mail:hyrperes@gmail.com

2Translated by Henrique Peres. E-mail:hyrperes@gmail.com

3For aesthetic reasons, during writing we will alternately use the first person plural and the first person singular.

4The dichotomy “empirical knowledge x systematic knowledge” accompanied us during a good part of our education. It was our object of study in our master's research, whose title expresses the solution found at that time for the dichotomy: “Empirical knowledge x systematic knowledge: the search for a unity between theory and practice in the teaching of mathematics and science (physics) in the 1st segment of the 1st grade”.

5Much later as professor of the Graduate Program in Education at UFES, we expanded the discussion of chance in scientific production with the work “The wisdom of chaos” by Jonh Briggs and David Peat (2000) and, also, the discussion about invention and intuition in knowledge, with Virginia Kastrup (1999) in the publication “The invention of self and the world”. And with Henri Bergson (1990) in “Matter and memory”.

6At the time, this was the name used by the State Department of Education (SEDU) to refer to a teacher hired for a specific time and who had not completed a graduate course. As the area of Mathematics had a large gap in the teaching staff, there was always the possibility of a contract, the process of which was under the responsibility of the schools.

7After 17 years we returned to this school and found colleagues from our time. Nothing is more rewarding for the teacher than recognition for his work and the pleasure of meeting old school friends.

8We were one of the pioneers, if not the first teacher in the municipal network of Vitória, to get paid leave during the Master's Course.

9During the eight years of work as a teacher in the municipal and state networks, I participated in a single “recycling of teachers”, whose objective was the reorganization of the contents of mathematics from 5th to 8th grades.

10The research took place from November 1985 to October 1986, at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso - Programa Brasil), with funding from Inep-MEC.

11Even though I have been doing research in / of / with everyday life for some time, this attitude will only appear in an institutionalized way, that is, published, based on the book “Research in / of schools' daily life: about knowledge networks”, organized by Nilda Alves and Inês Barbosa de Oliveira in 2001.

12The research was carried out from November 1987 to November 1988 at the Master's in Education at UFF, with funding from SESG-MEC.

13Even though I have been doing research in / of / with everyday life for some time, this attitude will only appear in an institutionalized way, that is, published, based on the book “Research in / of schools' daily life: about knowledge networks”, organized by Nilda Alves and Inês Barbosa de Oliveira in 2001.

14Our first parade was in 1986, at Caprichosos de Pilares, in a wing named “Canariquitos”, within the plot: Brazil with Z, will we never be, or will we be?

15Although we officially returned to our activities at the Department of Education in March 1989, conducting our research required our presence in Vitória throughout 1988, since our data production included workshops, groups of studies, meetings and also advisory in the area of Mathematics and Science to the teachers of the initial grades of primary school of all schools in the municipal network.

16We started the Doctoral Course in 1996 at USP.

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Received: July 14, 2020; Accepted: September 21, 2020

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